It's all about where you draw the line

Posts Tagged ‘Cheeseheads’

I’m heading north on Rt 43, a divided highway with a speed limit of 65MPH. Two lanes going my direction. Light to no traffic. I’m cruising along in the right lane going 65 (give or take). I come up behind a guy going about 45.

No problem; it’s two lanes and I can easily pass him. I swing over into the left lane and accelerate. He accelerates with me, matching my speed increase so that I’m pretty much glued to his blind spot. I’ve seen people do this before of course, but usually they accelerate no more than about five to seven MPH before you can pass. This guy? No matter how fast I went*, he matched it. He accelerated hard if he had to — whatever was needed to stop me from actually passing him.

Well, Hell. If they guy wants to drive fast, I don’t care if I’m behind him or not; but I don’t want to cruise along in his blind spot. I back off and slip back behind him. He promptly slows to 45 MPH. I pull out to pass him again. Exact same thing. He accelerates hard to prevent me from passing.

This went on for about 15 minutes. Speed up, slow down, repeat. This clearly wasn’t that unconscious acceleration that many people do when passed. This was deliberate. For whatever reason, he was NOT going to let me pass him, and would only let me up to the speed limit if I was riding his left rear fender.

I finally managed to pass him by backing way the heck off (slowing down even slower than he was going, and falling back about a quarter mile), and then speeding up so that by the time I reached him again I was going 20 MPH faster than he was. No chance for his car to accelerate hard enough for him to keep up. Got in front of him, stayed at 65MPH. Strangely, or not, he made no effort at that point to match my speed, and fell behind quite quickly as he continued along at around 20 under the speed limit.